Crow, 9" By 24 Linoleum Block Print.

Crow, 9" by 24 linoleum block print.

This is the the last of the long animal prints I made and while I deeply enjoy the format because it looks so banner-ey and nice the problem is, that because this is a deeply non-standard size it would be prohibitively expense to frame it. such is life.

I re-made this print again after the first run and cut out the veins on the grape leaves to add more variance in line width and texture. I dunno if this helped or hindered the image particularly as the delicate textures being the main point of interest got a little overwhelmed, but not too excessively.

hard to tell sometimes.

I do feel that I should have put more details into the bird. maybe in future I can do something interesting with that.

this is also the most obvious of my Hogwarts related symbols. another thing that amuses me greatly

 A Cat May Look At A Kinglet.

This is an example of the title driving the idea. I wanted to do something interesting with an extra half-block I had laying around and I was in a really pissy mood which was mostly directed at the people around me.

if you couldn't tell by the kitty-gon' cut-a-bitch expression in that cat's face.

anyways, this is another exploration into using color, and another example of why I don't spend a lot of time working with color. I naturally tend to use color like a printmaker, my impulse is to lay down blocks of a single color that may be built up or layered but still exist in blocks. I admit that this is unnecessary in a piece like this, where the color is applied by handcoloring with watercolor paint.

so I'm stuck in a bit of a bind when it comes to critiques, on the one hand I catch crap from painters for not using color like a painter if I'm going to paint at all. "it should be more blended, why do you still need those dark outlines, you need to look at real colors out in the world, blue isn't just a monochromatic blue, you can't just decide you want a color and take it right out if the tube"

valid, but annoying, I like my blocks of color.

and the printers, who don't consider hand coloring to be a legitimate printmaking process, because it is both applied directly by hand to the paper with out an intermediate step, and because it destroys the sanctity of a printed edition by introducing irregularities.

as if my color editions aren't irregular as all heck as it is.

storal of this mory, if you can't please everybody, you gotta please yourself.

Screen Prints!

alright these are the three screen prints I did for Ben Moreau's summer screen printing class that he liked so much he said it was better than a visit to the dentist for a root canal.

and what else could possibly be better than dentistry?

alright, these are a bit of a departure from my other stuff. I was just not feeling it during the summer after I made it into the BFA program when it comes to sticking to my "theme" and making art that would be useful for my BFA portfolio in the coming year. it was my first summer in Bellingham, I was mostly crippled all the hell, and sick of being pretentious and sad. So, I made OZ Fanart.

the first one is a reductive screen print of myself as Glinda the Good Witch of the South in her costume as she appears in the first OZ movie. it glitters. it is hard to convey just how much these things glitter in the sunlight like fairy-taffy made of pink and shimmer but they do. I would have to convert it into one of those glitter .gifs to give you an approximation of how nice they look.

this print was made with reductive screenprinting, which I have a pretty hard time controlling because I am like, comprised of 90% sloppy mess. I still love it.

the second one is of Christine as Ozma the rightful Queen of OZ. I was mostly trying out all different kids of techniques with this one, the swirls of the sky, the layers, the bajillion million layers and colors and the fact that it could still use a pattern on her dress. the gold bits also glitter.

this print was made through transparency processes, both using clear plastic and ink/paint/cutouts to expose the screens, and gobs and gobs of transparent base to give the inks character and clarity. (note her head flowers over the building)

third one: A Tribute For The Wizard.

photographic processes and fucking up repeatedly by not saving my progress lead to the end result you see here, this is Ben as the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz being displeased by our offering of One Good Print.

as he said in crit "YOU MUST HAVE AT LEAST FIVE PERFECT PRINTS!!"

everybody in class except for the Asian kid we never really saw posed for this.

first silhouette is Jake, then Brendan, then me holding aloft the golden print, then Allison and Stacey.

this class was good times.

alright, so we talked before about how the relief printmaking class I took was an unending anxiety nightmare for both me and my professor/adviser Ben Moreau. this piece here is one of the reasons why.

it is an eight-color suicide block in an edition of somewhere around 15 depending on how many of the messed up ones you count.  it was my first time working with Medium Density Fiberboard (or MDF as I will call it) as a carving media, and my first time working with wood instead of linoleum.

lemmie tell you right now, carving-linoleum cuts like butter in comparison to this compressed weetabix wafer made of sawdust and glue. everything about working with MDF was painful and it did nothing but fight me the entire time. add on top of this, the problem that I absolutely could not come up with an image that I needed to make in color.

voices yelling at me at the time, both real and imagined, were nothing but tormenting whispers of "aren't you so glad you're working with wood now like a real relief printmaker? I mean linoleum is a good student media, for beginners, but wood is so much more professional" and "don't forget everything you do this year has to be focused on things for your BFA show, so this would be a good project to make a nice colorful centerpiece for the whole thing"   with a heaping lump of  "fucking up on this project will mean you don't belong in the program, you didn't deserve to get in anyway, and you're not good enough to stay, you do nothing but create filth for other people to clean up and destroy equipment in the process"

so yeah. whenever I managed to get a little sleep (and mind you this was also when my back was starting to really have problems as well, so it was hard enough to sleep) I would dream the same horrible anxiety nightmare. I would be in the print lab trying desperately to make prints and every time I did anything I destroyed everything around me and also disappointing my friends and angered Ben. I would dream of being screamed at as I pulled print after ruined print, each wrong in a different way, each fucking up the equipment in a different way.

I talked to Ben at some point about this and it turns out he was anxiety having nightmares about me ruining everything too. (and I did end up accidentally printing on the blankets, but they weren't exactly ruined [unlike some other parties who will remain Drew, who accidentally shredded a blanket trying to Chine-collé on the wrong press] so whatever)

for all that though, this is not a bad print.

the idea was a gift from Christine who is much better both at color and catchy titles than I am. the title is "she brings the rain" and is a commentary on my Debbie Downer tendencies.

The Moths Were, As Always, Fatally Curious.

linoleum block print, edition of 3, May 2012 for my BFA show.

this is actually the last large Deer Girl print I have made, it is for a transition to another chapter in her story and because of this it doesn't really fit within the established antler-chronology (she has two antlers, loses one, grows new tree-antler, tree antlers bloom) presumably antlers fall off and grow back new. presumably I'm not that interested in being able to lay these all out end to end and saying here, this is the story, this is how it goes. it's better for everybody if I keep it a mystery.

I have told one person the proper order for all of the prints and the plot of the story thus far, that person was my BFA show partner Chris Popek and it was because I had every print I had made right there and we were figuring out which ones were going to go where for our show. also I think he asked nicely. such things could happen.

anyways, the title obviously has a double meaning of the moths we can see immolating themselves on the lantern, and a potential decision by Deer Girl to go explore the lighted cozy looking town. oddly enough I modeled the town on Bellingham even as I was graduating and preparing to leave.

when I had my show up and I was taking my tun minding it, this very cute old couple came in and chortled happily at all of my work and decided to buy this one because they liked the title so much.

you can't really see it from here, but all of those stars have five points. all of them.

Just wanted to say, I think your prints are beautiful!

Thank You!